


It’s A Kind Of Magic

by Black_Crystal_Dragon



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Aziraphale is Not Innocent (Good Omens), Crowley in leather pants, Crowley is Peter Vincent, Established Relationship, Fright Night (2011) fusion, Identity Reveal, Leather Trousers, M/M, he's embarrassed about it, not a retelling of Fright Night, that's the fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-18
Updated: 2020-02-18
Packaged: 2021-02-27 21:55:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,875
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22792840
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Black_Crystal_Dragon/pseuds/Black_Crystal_Dragon
Summary: Crowley gets mistaken for someone called ‘Peter Vincent’. Intrigued, Aziraphale decides to do some digging and discovers that Crowley once performed in his very own magic act - and wore a very interesting costume ...TheFright Night(2011) fusion that my BFF asked for. (No knowledge ofFright Nightis needed, however! The plot events of the film didn't happen in the Good Omens universe, but someone going by the name of 'Peter Vincent' still did a stage show.)
Relationships: Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)
Comments: 9
Kudos: 25





	It’s A Kind Of Magic

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Ice_Elf](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ice_Elf/gifts).



> Thank you to [Ice_Elf](/users/Ice_Elf/) for the beta, and for sending me the original prompt.
> 
> Click on the footnotes to jump down to read them, then click 'return' to go back to the paragraph you were reading.

It began with a pair of tickets to see Penn and Teller at the Hammersmith Apollo. Crowley’s treat.

Crowley’s surprise, in fact. Aziraphale was aware that the pair was performing in London that summer, but he hadn’t thought to suggest it for the simple fact that Crowley didn’t like stage magic. He could have gone by himself but visiting the theatre, whether for a play, a musical or a display of prestidigitation, was an experience meant to be shared – and he’d grown used to Crowley as his constant theatre companion over the past twelve blissfully peaceful months since Armageddon. He hadn’t wanted to see the performance by himself.

So when the Bentley screeched to a halt beside the Apollo, after Crowley casually dropped into conversation earlier that afternoon that he had a couple of tickets to ‘something you might like, angel’, Aziraphale was rendered speechless. He didn’t even scold Crowley for half-blocking the gates that led around the back of the theatre.

Crowley circled around the car and opened the door for him. He leaned down, glasses slipping to reveal a flash of yellow eyes, and smiled. “Not interested?”

“Of course I am!” Aziraphale spluttered. He took Crowley’s offered hand as he climbed out and stared up at the glittering lights, the huge letters across the front of the building, the posters. “Oh, Crowley – thank you.”

Crowley made a soft, embarrassed noise and ushered Aziraphale towards the foyer.

It was still early enough that the doors to the auditorium hadn’t yet opened, but there was already a decent gathering around the merchandise stalls and at the bar. Aziraphale drifted after Crowley as he made his way over to order them some drinks, taking in the atmosphere that was starting to build. Happy people, excited about what was to come. He smiled as he accepted the glass Crowley handed him and raised it in a silent toast before taking a sip.

They had been kicking their heels for a few minutes when a woman wearing a great deal of eyeliner and blood-red lipstick came over and addressed herself to Crowley. “Um, excuse me – Mr Vincent?”

Aziraphale raised his eyebrows. That certainly wasn’t an alias he was familiar with. Crowley turned towards her slowly, expression frozen.

“Oh my gosh, it actually is you, isn’t it?” she said, breathless with sudden excitement. “I can’t believe I’m actually meeting _the_ Peter Vincent!”

“I think you’ve got me mixed up with someone else,” Crowley said in the low, faintly dangerous voice that sent most humans scurrying away the moment they heard it.

It had no effect whatsoever on the woman standing beside him, who was practically bouncing on the spot. She did, however, gasp at his words and momentarily clap a hand over her mouth before continuing in a stage whisper. “Oh! Oh, of course – sorry, sorry, you don’t want to be recognised, right? I should’ve guessed with the sunglasses. It’s just, I saw your show in Vegas and I just had to come over and see if it was really you, and I wanted to say thank you because it was amazing and –”

Crowley snapped his fingers. The young woman’s mouth closed and her features took on a dreamy, blank quality. “Go back to your friends. Enjoy your evening. Don’t bother me again.”

“Was that really necessary?” Aziraphale asked as Crowley released her with another snap. She wandered away, bumping gently into people as she crossed the room towards a group of other women similarly dressed in all-black who had been watching the encounter with avid interest.

“I told her to enjoy herself, angel, what more do you want?” Crowley grumbled. He drained his wineglass and took hold of Aziraphale’s arm. “Come on. They’re opening the doors.”

They had not been opening the doors a moment ago, Aziraphale was sure, but he didn’t want to risk ruining their evening by testing Crowley’s frazzled temper. He allowed himself to be conducted into the auditorium and to their excellent seats without argument.

However, he didn’t forget the incident, even after the curtain went up.

~~~

Contrary to what some people 1 might think, Aziraphale was not technologically illiterate. He had a computer, equipped with an internet connection, and he knew how to use it.

He waited a very restrained half hour after Crowley had dropped him off at the bookshop before he booted the computer up, navigated to Google.com and typed the name in. The topmost result was from Wikipedia: ‘Peter Vincent – Vampire Slayer’. However, it was the display of pictures topping the right-hand information box that caught Aziraphale’s eye.

Crowley stared back at him from each one, wide dark eyes ringed in black, face gaunt and decorated with a beard the like of which he hadn’t worn in centuries, long black hair tumbling well past his shoulders. Was that an eyebrow piercing? In one of the images, he was completely surrounded by objectively beautiful young women who pawed at his chest and shoulders with clawed fingers, their mouths filled with improbable fangs. In another he was alone but held two stakes in the shape of a cross above his heart. In all of them, he wore an impractical leather coat, sealed across his chest by a single button, and matching trousers that made his current sartorial choices look positively conservative.

“What on Earth have you been getting up to?” Aziraphale murmured.

There were three YouTube links just below the related questions.2 The angel clicked on one of them.

Twenty minutes down a rabbit hole of shaky footage from the back of an auditorium and melodramatic television adverts proclaiming Peter Vincent’s Fright Night at the Hard Rock Hotel and Casino to be ‘a mind blowing experience of the occult and supernatural’ and ‘a magical tour-de-force’, he found a professionally-shot clip. A woman in white lay on a bed centre-stage, while more women in flimsy black gowns flashed their fangs against her skin for the cameras. Then Peter Vincent – _Crowley_ – appeared in a flash of fire and whirled around with a frankly hypocritical cry of, “Get back, demons!”

Aziraphale watched the rest of the clip with interest – the suspension, the flames, the ultimate transformation from ‘vampire’ back to human: all very entertaining – before scrolling down.

There was a playlist.

~~~

“I looked up that Peter Vincent fellow,” Aziraphale said conversationally, when Crowley next visited the shop.

It wasn’t his opening gambit. He’d made sure they were ensconced in the back room with a glass of wine each, first. He’d also tactically waited until the sunglasses had been tossed aside atop a stack of books, so that he could see the whole of Crowley’s expression.

Crowley went still for an instant before draping himself more horizontally across the couch.

“Oh?” he said, staring into his wine instead of meeting Aziraphale’s eyes and affecting supreme boredom with the subject.

“Mm,” Aziraphale said as he took a sip from his own glass. “You know, I can see why the young lady mistook you for him. The resemblance is uncanny.”

Crowley made an apathetic sort of noise. He hadn’t blinked since Aziraphale had mentioned the name.

“He did a magic show in Las Vegas back in the early 2000s – something about vampires, of all things!” Aziraphale told him, playing along with the pretence for the time being. When Crowley still volunteered nothing beyond performative indifference, he added, “I found a recording.”

Crowley choked on a mouthful of wine, eyes suddenly very wide. “You what?”

“Found a recording,” he repeated cheerfully. “It’s a shame I couldn’t get hold of the DVD – no one seems to be selling it anymore, even second hand – but it’s all on the YouTube.”

“That’s piracy, angel,” Crowley rasped.

“Goodness, I suppose it is. Imagine: me, a pirate!” Aziraphale chuckled to himself as he imagined it – ruffled shirt, tricorn hat and all – but Crowley didn’t laugh. Crowley actually looked rather ill. He decided to take pity on him. “I thought it was rather good, actually.”

He took a slow sip of his wine before he went on, to give that statement time to penetrate through Crowley’s alarm.

“Utterly melodramatic, of course, but I suppose that fits the Gothic theme,” he continued, thinking of the genre’s collective penchant for overwrought emotion. “And the magic itself was faultless.”

“Faultless,” Crowley said in an oddly blank tone. Aziraphale hummed in agreement.

“Oh, yes. Superb execution, I have to say. Though I’m not sure it was entirely necessary to have quite so many young ladies in plunging nightgowns fawning over him all the time,” he sniffed, rather more sharply than he’d intended. He was aware that the whole thing was an act and the slender, attractive ‘vampires’ on the stage were only playing parts. Still, he’d bristled every time they’d crowded ‘Peter Vincent’ and spread wandering hands across every inch of exposed skin, sneaking exploratory fingertips beneath the leather of his coat.

Crowley grimaced. “It is Vegas, angel, what did you expect?”

Aziraphale made a considering noise as he drank some more of his wine. “I suppose you’re right.”

He could admit that much. He didn’t have to like it.

“Don’t know why you watched it, anyway,” Crowley muttered, looking away at last. “Not really your thing, is it? Vampires?”

“I was curious,” Aziraphale said, and then decided to put an end to the charade. “You know, I was particularly impressed by the escapology element. Some of it – well. Some of it was nothing short of miraculous.”

He fixed Crowley with a look. The kind of look that he hoped would say, _I know you, you old serpent_.

Crowley squirmed under the scrutiny, obviously trying to decide whether or not he could talk his way out of this one, before deflating into the worn cushions with a groan of acute embarrassment. Aziraphale stopped suppressing his smile and Crowley groaned again, more dramatically this time, and dragged a hand across his face.

“Look, angel, it’s not like I did it for fun!” he protested.

“I never suggested you did,” Aziraphale said. Watching Crowley fluster filled him with affectionate amusement.

“I had orders – you know, get over there while the kid’s still too young to properly manipulate, stir up interest in the demonic and occult,” he continued almost without pause.

“Not to mention lust and envy,” Aziraphale muttered under his breath. He did not point out that Crowley had spent all of his time as Peter Vincent vanquishing and exorcising vampiric demons rather than summoning them, which surely rendered his efforts counterproductive.

“And I had nothing to do with the whole vampire thing!” Crowley insisted with the air of a consummate professional whose reputation had been called into question. He lurched approximately upright, the better to gesticulate as he talked. “I mean, it’s hardly accurate, is it? Turning human into demons.” He scoffed at the sheer absurdity of it. “You’d think Hell wouldn’t want stuff like that getting around, but nooooo! They stick me up on a stage five nights a week – me! – pretending that, yes, of course we can make you one of us by biting you in the neck!”

He subsided into the couch, grumbling about inaccurate human folklore and bloody stupid assignments.

“That’s not how it works, then?” Aziraphale asked, curious despite himself. 

“No,” Crowley said, scowling. “It’s just another kind of demonic possession, no blood-sucking required. But you know what the rest of them are like, they don’t have a clue – mistake sensationalist literature for an instruction manual.”

Aziraphale offered up a sympathetic hum. He’d dealt with his fair share of overzealous angels, after all – thinking they knew best how to approach humans despite never having spoken to one before, imagining their understanding of social mores was in any way accurate.

When it seemed that Crowley wasn’t going to volunteer any more without prompting, he said delicately, “Well, even if it was under orders, you did a marvellous job with the performance itself, Crowley, I was very impressed.”

“Thanks?” Crowley grunted and hid behind the rim of his wineglass.

“Such a pity I never got to see it in person,” Aziraphale began. “I don’t suppose …”

“No,” Crowley interrupted. He pointed at him with the hand that held his drink in what was clearly a warning. “I’m not doing stage magic for you – or with you – or whatever it is you’re thinking about, angel – don’t ask me!”

“I wasn’t going to,” Aziraphale said reproachfully. While it would be fun, in theory, to do a few tricks together, he was well aware that it wasn’t Crowley’s cup of tea and, as such, hadn’t even considered it.

Crowley sat back, somewhat mollified, and took a wary sip of his wine. “Right.”

“I was going to say,” Aziraphale went on, “That I don’t suppose you still have those trousers.”

“What?” Crowley frowned at him. “Why?”

“Because they suited you ever so nicely, my dear,” Aziraphale murmured. He allowed his gaze to sweep down the long, slanted lines of Crowley’s body and back up again. “I’d very much like to see you wearing them.”

Crowley blinked. “The trousers.”

“Yes,” Aziraphale said. He considered a moment, then added, “Although, I didn’t much care for the rest of your costume – the hair and the coat and such – so you needn’t bother with any of that.”

As he spoke, Crowley’s eyebrows ascended towards his hairline. In a strangled voice that was aiming for sarcasm but landed slightly off target, he said, “So, just the trousers, then?”

It was Aziraphale’s turn to fidget. He hadn’t quite thought through the implications before he opened his mouth, and of course Crowley had taken the statement literally. However, he refused to break eye contact even as heat spilled across his cheeks.

“Ideally, yes,” he said.

Crowley huffed – it wasn’t quite a laugh, but there was a hopeful, surprised little smile tugging on the corner of his mouth. It grew in proportion to Aziraphale’s blush until he was very hot under the collar and Crowley was smirking openly at him.

“Well, angel,” he said, snake-eyes glittering with delighted mischief, “I’m sure that can be arranged.”

He stretched out on the couch like a particularly self-satisfied cat in a sunbeam and clicked his fingers. His current outfit disappeared, replaced by an expanse of bare skin and the requested pair of trousers.

“Oh!” Aziraphale squeaked, transfixed.

The leather shone dully where it clung to Crowley’s thighs, so much tighter than he was prepared for. The trousers were lower than expected, too, and the angles of his hipbones sloped up above the waistband. The metal eyelets around the laced fastenings glinted where they caught the light. Aziraphale realised he was staring and dragged his gaze away from them, but looking up wasn’t much better because Crowley was otherwise extremely naked.

“Living up to expectations?” Crowley teased when Aziraphale’s eyes finally arrived at his face. 

“Far exceeding them, my dear,” he replied warmly.

Crowley’s appearance as Peter Vincent had been intriguing, but this was better – this was Crowley himself, without the strange black hair and too-human eyes and bombastic vampire hunter persona. He didn’t blush at Aziraphale’s words, but the leather creaked softly as he shifted, his gaze flicking away. A fresh burst of fondness spread through Aziraphale’s chest. He put down his wineglass.

“It’s very kind of you to indulge me,” he murmured, glancing appreciatively over Crowley’s body once again. Crowley shrugged with one shoulder and made a dismissive, embarrassed sound in the back of his throat. Aziraphale smiled. “Lovely as they look on you, I can’t imagine they’re the most comfortable thing to wear. Would you like me to help you take them off?”

“What, here in the shop?” Crowley squawked, eyebrows shooting up.

“No, upstairs,” Aziraphale said simply. He got to his feet and offered his hand. “Shall we?”

Crowley stared at it for a moment before he tipped back the last of his wine all in one go, exposing the long lines of his throat as he swallowed. Once he was finished, he set the glass aside and took Aziraphale’s hand. He let himself be pulled up off the couch and immediately stepped in close, looping both arms around his neck and kissing him.

Aziraphale’s hands found their way to his hips. He was sorely tempted to slide his fingers around to Crowley’s arse and press them into the warm pliant leather there – but he resisted. There would be plenty of time for a practical inspection once they reached the bedroom.

Still, it took a great deal of willpower to let Crowley go. He stepped reluctantly back and gestured towards the staircase, smiling. “After you.”

Crowley was smirking as he brushed past him to saunter deeper into the shop. The low cut of the trousers seemed to emphasise the customary sway of his hips. The footage he’d found hadn’t really allowed Aziraphale to admire them from the rear before and he found it very difficult to look away as he hurried to follow him.

He didn’t want to miss the sight of him going up the stairs, after all.

###### Footnotes

1\. Crowley. And everyone else Aziraphale had ever met. [ return ]

2\. Apparently, people also asked: ‘What happened to Peter Vincent Fright Night?’, ‘Does Peter Vincent kill vampires?’ ‘What nationality is Peter Vincent?’, and ‘Is Peter Vincent married?’ [ return ]

**Author's Note:**

> Ice_Elf's original prompt was: "You know what I want to read. Aziraphale finding clips of Crowley's magic act online and ribbing him gently for it. Then asking to see the pants." I hope I did it justice!
> 
> This fic implies that Crowley is better at stage magic than Aziraphale, but he’s not: he uses a series of miracles to make himself look good. If Aziraphale knew, he’d be Very Disappointed. (Crowley is never going to tell him.)
> 
> I really wanted to send them to see a magic act to set this whole scenario up, and then I couldn't believe my luck when I found that Penn & Teller actually will be performing at the Hammersmith Apollo in June 2020!


End file.
